America First, Last and Always!

Friday morning, President Donald Trump officially declassified the FISA abuse memo produced by the House Intelligence Committee. Counsel to the President, Don McGahn, then returned to memo from the White House back to the committee. Shortly after 12pm Eastern, the memo went public for all to see. The reactions have been very mixed and mostly predictable. Members of the Democratic Party and their allies in The Media are railing against Rep. Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, for pushing this memo. Many Republicans, like Sen. John McCain are also upset. I′ll get back to him, later. But, for all of their bluster, opponents to the memo′s release have been shown to be hysterical liars. The memo does not besmirch the FBI and DOJ as a whole, nor does it endanger national security by revealing any sources or methods. What the memo DOES do is inform of public about several bad apples who were entrusted to run the FBI and DOJ, and then abused that trust.

The FISA memo does name names! James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Sally Yates, Dana Boente, Bruce Ohr and Rod Rosenstein are all implicated in abusing the FISA laws. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act was intended to protect America and American citizens from foreign enemies. It was not intended t spy on American citizens. Especially not on citizens participating in a political campaign.

However, that is exactly what happened. On October 21, 2016, the FBI and Justice Department went to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, FISC, to obtain authorization to conduct electronic surveillance on Carter Page. He was a ′B′, or even ′C-List′ volunteer advisor for the Trump campaign. An earlier attempt in July, 2016 to get a FISA warrant was rejected, as the only ′evidence′ against Carter Page was the drunken ramblings of a D or E-List volunteer to the Trump campaign, George Papadopoulos at a pub in the UK. There was also an old suspicion that the Russians may have tried to recruit Carter Page as a spy back in 2013, but an investigation then produced nothing.

Keep in mind that under FISA law, there are only 5, count′em, FIVE members of the FBI and DOJ authorized to approve a request to the FISC. The Director and Deputy Director of the FBI, the Attorney General and Deputy AG, as well as the Assistant AG for National Security. Also keep in mind that these FISA warrants only last 90 days and expire unless renewed. The warrant on Carter Page was renewed FOUR times!

So, what was different between the July and October FISA requests? The memo reveals that it was the phony dossier ginned up by Christopher Steele, a former British MI6 officer, working at the time for a U.S. company, Fusion GPS. They were employed by a law firm, Perkins Coie, representing the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, or DNC. The dossier was a pure work of fiction intended to be used as ′opposition research′ to throw mud at then Candidate Donald Trump.

In the October FISA request, James Comey and Sally Yates signed off on the request which had two additional ′sources′ from the July request. The October request listed the Steele-Fusion GPS dossier as a source. It also listed an article by Micahel Isikoff from Yahoo News on September 23, 2016. The Isikoff articles was about how Carter Page traveled to Moscow in July, 2016. However, Isikoff′s sources was none other than Steele and Fusion GPS! They had been busy trying to shop around the dossier to at least 6 news agencies. Steele even met with one news agency at the law offices of Perkins Coie in Washington, DC. So, the Isikoff article was not really an independent, corroborating source to verify the Steele-Fusion GPS dossier.

The FBI-DOJ request for the FISA warrant did not disclose this to the FISC judge. Nor did they tell the judge that the dossier, itself, was merely a piece of opposition research by Fusion GPS. Nor did they tell the judge that the dossier was bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the DNC. On October 30, 2016, the FBI dismissed Steele as an intelligence source after they had learned about Steele and Fusion GPS shopping the dossier around. Specifically to David Corn of Mother Jones Magazine. I doubt if the FBI and DOJ mentioned that fact, too, to the FISC judges during the next 4 requests to extend to FISA warrant. They also did not tell the FISC judge in October, 2016, that the verification of the dossier itself was ″still in its infancy″, according to the head of the FBI counter-intelligence division, Bill Priestap.

Make no mistake, these omissions of facts and actual deceptive facts by FBI and DOJ officials to the FISA court judges are federal offenses. The memo drafted by Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy is a summary of just some of the thousands of pages of documents and testimony Congress obtained from the FBI and DOJ. Months went by as the FBI and DOJ ignored subpoenas from Congress to get this information. After about 6 months, only under the threat of being censured by Congress were the documents handed over.

A nothing item to make no mistake on is that this memo is only the beginning. Much, much more is to come. Many of the source documents, such as the actual FISA requests, will eventually be declassified and released. Nunes promised last night on Fox News that another memo, this time dealing with the activities of the State Department under John Kerry, will be released, soon. Memos on other agencies, perhaps even on the Barack Obama White House, will follow.

The impact of all of this on the Robert Mueller probe is significant. The whole Trump-Russia collusion story is a total fabrication, compiled by Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS, bought and paid for by the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The entire investigation, both during and after the election, is a complete farce. The firing of James Comey as FBI Director was far from an ′obstruction of justice′, but to correct an injustice of deception and incompetence. Comey, and others, clearly obstructed justice themselves by going easy on Hillary Clinton during the email server probe. Comey then exceeded his authority by making himself an Acting Attorney General when he gave his public speech exonerating her. Comey then leaked government documents to the press for the precise purpose of launching a Special Counsel probe into the Trump campaign.

The ′Deep State′ may not be as deep as we think. This first memo shows that just a handful of top officials at the FBI and DOJ were involved in trying to frame or sabotage President Donald Trump. This is not yet a wide spread indictment of either institution and may not shake out to be such. But the memo does show that this ′secret society′ of a few officials and employees are rotten to the core and need to be criminally investigated. Oh, I almost forgot about John McCain! He played a minor role in this affair as well, sending an aide to the UK to meet Steele and get a copy of the dossier. McCain then showed it to Comey, thinking it was authentic. As Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!"

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